Marco Island has one high school of its own. Marco Island Academy is a public charter school in Collier County, on San Marco Road, that opened in 2011 and enrolls a few hundred students in grades nine through twelve. Its prom stays on the island — the 2024 dance was held in a ballroom at the JW Marriott on May 11, and the 2021 prom was at the Marco Island Yacht Club on North Collier Boulevard. A shop on Bald Eagle Drive that stocks Jovani and Mac Duggal means a student can buy the dress and get to the dance without ever driving off the island.
What the store actually is
This is not a prom-only shop, and it helps to know that before the drive. Kay’s describes its own range as sportswear through evening wear and mother of the bride, with a clearance floor upstairs. The two prom labels on the racks are verified — Jovani and Mac Duggal both list the Bald Eagle Drive address on their official retailer locators — but the center of gravity here is grown-up occasion dressing in a resort town. Call before coming in if a specific silhouette or size matters; how much prom stock is on the floor in March is not something a directory listing can tell you.
One practical upside of that mix: a mother buying her own dress for a spring wedding and a daughter looking at a Mac Duggal are shopping the same store at the same time.
One family, since 1976
Kay Folsom and her husband Bill opened the first boutique in 1976, after Kay had worked in other Naples dress shops. Her daughter Jeane Hilt runs the business now, and it grew past the island — Kay’s locations have operated on Fifth Avenue South in Naples and at the Galleria Shoppes at Vanderbilt. Kay Folsom died in October 2024, six weeks after her hundredth birthday.
The clearest sign of what the store is to this town is its annual style show. The February 2017 edition was the 41st, held at the Hideaway Beach Club in front of more than 250 people, with every garment and piece of jewelry on the runway coming from the store and Kay’s regulars modeling it. A shop does not run that event for four decades unless island women are buying their evening clothes there.
Who else is within reach
Island students who do not attend the charter schools are zoned for Manatee Middle and Lely High School in East Naples, about eight miles off the island. Marco Island Charter Middle School feeds both Marco Island Academy and Lely. So the customer base for a prom gown here is small and specific: a charter high school of a couple hundred kids, plus island families whose teenagers commute up Collier Boulevard to Lely every morning.
Proms in this part of Southwest Florida land in April and May — Marco Island Academy’s fell on May 11 in 2024 and May 15 in 2021 — which puts serious shopping in late winter, the same stretch when the island is fullest and the store is putting on its own show.
Getting there
1089 Bald Eagle Drive, on the north end of the island near the Olde Marco historic district, well off the beachfront hotel strip. The phone is (239) 394-1033.